


Dismantle The Sun

by shadow_in_the_shade



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Angst, Eventual Romance, F/F, Flashbacks, Horcruxes, Kinda, M/M, Other, Russian Mythology, very vaguely, will add more tags as i continue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-02-28 22:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13280814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_in_the_shade/pseuds/shadow_in_the_shade
Summary: The Doctor, Martha and Jack are on the trail of a sorcerer who seems to be putting out the stars. he also seems to have split his soul up into seven objects scattered across time and space, question is will the Doctor be able to destroy them as he finds them? Set somewhere between seasons 3 and 4, with flashbacks to academy era Thoschei.Basically I stumbled across the Russian folk tale "Koschei the Deathless" and this fic idea was the inevitable outcome.Tags and rating my change/ increase as I progress, still not sure yet.





	1. Chapter 1

**Dismantle the Sun**

_The stars are not wanted now; put out every one_

_Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun_

_Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood_

_For nothing now can ever come to any good._

_**-**  WH Auden "Funeral Blues"_

 

**1.**

It was midnight in the forest on an island in the middle of a pitch black sea, the wind whispering eerily through the tops of the trees. All of a sudden the quiet was broken by a terrible rushing of air and a crunching of sand as the blue box landed at the top of the beach. Two figures burst out of it and onto the sand, the one starting to run down towards the sea and the other calling out in alarm –

“Martha don’t –stop - it’s not safe!”

“Safe?” she turned round so fast her hair almost hit her in the face – “What’s safe about any of this, Doctor? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but it’s a clear night up there tonight.”

He looked up. She was right. It was clear as crystal up there and barely more than a half dozen stars.

“They’re going out fast. We have to run. But not that way – into the woods.”

“What’s so bad about the sea?” she shouted as he started to run up the hill to where the woods began.

“Mermaids!” he shouted back

“Mermaids?” she frowned, not sure what the problem was.

“Mermaids.” He stopped for a moment in the dark of the trees, looking around blindly in the hope of a clue. Martha ran into his back, got her breath and sighed; anticipating the question, he turned round for a moment, eyes dark with the danger, and nodded –

“Like sharks in these parts. Get too close and you may hear them singing, each to each –” he blinked rapidly as though shaking off an old and never forgotten horror – “Trust me –” he grinned too brightly – “You don’t want that. Come on.”

They crashed on through the woods in a state of increasing panic.

“Doctor, this is hopeless –” Martha groaned – “We can’t even see the stars any more, the trees are so close, we can’t –”

“We can’t see how many stars we’re losing and how fast. I know. It might be better this way. Come on”. They ran on.

After a nightmare age of running, pushing branches aside, getting hit, and not gently, in the face and chest and legs by branches whipping at them they skidded into a clearing where the moon poured through. Martha blinked, backed away, put a hand to her nose against the smell of rot and age and evil and took a tentative hold of the Doctor’s arm –

“Do you think that could be it?” she said, pointing at the tree.

The tree rose up from the center of the clearing like a sword thrust coming out of the earth, then it stopped abruptly and began to curl in on itself, the top of it twisting and pointing downwards like a petrified tentacle. Black, the tree was, like a burned thing, milky white and sickly on the underside and the roots that thrust up around its base all curling like hands beckoning sickly towards the hollow.

“The tree of the dead,” the Doctor said – “The Cursed tree, tree of souls, the place of creeping roots and untold horror – yes, Martha, I think this just _might_ be the right tree.”

“Shovel,” she said, and handed him it. He started to dig, spraying earth around them in the dank and silvery gloom. Finally, as he had known he would, he hit wood with a thunk and dropped to his knees in front of the hole, reaching in, Martha kneeling down beside him to help and together they pried the box loose from the damp and sucking soil. Both the earth and the roots like hands clung to the box as though unwilling to give it up. It was like trying to pull a foreign object deeply embedded in living flesh.

Once out, he handled the box with terrible care, as though to unleash it would spew horror upon the universe, as if anything could be worse than the Nothing that already seemed to be taking over.

“This is it then,” Martha said as he placed it on the ground and gently touched the iron bands that held the wood together. The lock broke with unnerving ease, and he was surprised at the way his hands trembled.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know –” he frowned. He really didn’t. He could find no words to express the unease he felt on finally having the thing in his grasp. Like he was damaging something he should not, he felt – invasive and in the wrong, afraid even. But that was silly.

“But this is it,” he found himself talking fast to cover up the unease – “Like the firebird said, the box buried beneath the Tree of Souls on the island in the middle of the singing sea and if she was right it should contain –” talking about it gave him the strength to open it and the contents glowed like fiery opal, strangely small and somehow fragile in the ugly rotting box – “The egg containing the Magician’s Soul.”

He held it up, gently, between his fingers. Even in the dark the egg glowed to illuminate the whole clearing, white and pearlescent, swimming with ribbons of misty red, sparkling gold from the center.

“It’s –” Martha stared at it wide – eyed –

“Beautiful,” the Doctor said, regretfully – “Yes. Did you bring the basilisk tooth?”

“You know, I’d ask why you have one of these –” Martha dug the tooth out of a pocket and the Doctor took it slowly.

“Oh, who doesn’t keep a basilisk tooth these days,” he spoke absently, placing the egg down gently on the ground –

“I’d step back if I were you. I have no idea what this thing might do.”

“But Doctor –” she stepped back and he waved off her attempt to be concerned for him. He touched the egg gently, almost caressing it, disturbed at himself for feeling the need and unsure where it came from. Then he raised the tooth like an executioner and brought it spearing down into the egg –

\- which shattered, flying apart in a burst of bright light and red spray like blood washing him momentarily in a terrible light and a cry of agony rocked through the clearing with the light waves, that flashed out to the sea and dimmed again as the Doctor fell back, Martha running in to catch him, both of them only realising at that moment that the cry of pain had come from _him._

“Doctor!” she yelled – “What happened? Are you alright? What was that?”

He sat up, clutching his chest, eyes dark and wild and confused –

“What -?” he yelled and then -

“It _hurt –_ ” he stared around the clearing perplexed, hearts racing, feeling the pain of it so bad it was almost as though he had broken one or both of them and had it badly patched together again. It felt as though – and he could not understand it – as though he had stabbed himself in the chest with the point of the basilisk tooth at the moment he had broken the egg –

“I destroyed the horcrux and it hurt – _me.”_ He shook his head, perplexed and aching, turning to Martha as the only other person there, even if he knew she could not know either - “Now what in all creation could _that_ mean?”

__x__


	2. Chapter 2

 

**2.**

“Doctor, come on,” Martha urged, more to get him moving than anything else. She was troubled by the confusion and bewilderment that seemed to have brought him to a standstill in the aftermath of the pain and destruction of the egg. _Horcrux,_ the Doctor had said. He hadn’t put it that way before – really? Was that what it was? Why hadn’t he said? If so, did that mean there were more? Besides, that was just fictional surely? She shook her head at herself. As if _that_ meant anything anymore. She still remembered him yelling _expelliarmus_ at the carrionites. She wants to ask but mostly she just wants him to move and stop looking so numb and strange.

“We should get back to Jack and the TARDIS. You said that beach wasn’t safe, and –”

“Jack – and a bunch of carnivorous mermaids singing.” The Doctor shakes his head but it does not help him dislodge whatever it is he can feel confusing him, the after tremors of agony still echoing through him. He feels _diminished_ somehow; he cannot help but think it, though he could not for a moment have said why. He feels infinitely more troubled even than before they found the horcrux and had no idea why the stars were going out or any way to stop it.

“Yeah –” he shakes his head again. The thing rattles in his brain but still does not dislodge – “We should – yeah we should get going –”

They headed back through the woods, this time following easily the trail they crashed through coming, back down the slope and to the beach. Sure enough they found the TARDIS door hanging open and a trail gouged in the sand leading down to the sea. They wasted no time racing down the furrow to find Jack, half in half out of the sea, scrabbling at the sand while clawed hands reached from the dark water, white skeletal limbs wrapped around the lower half of his body.

“You _could_ scream or something!” The Doctor yelled as he and Martha grabbed hold of Jack’s arms and started to pull –

“Bit busy, Doctor!” Jack yelled back, legs kicking with more than previous success at the arms and faces looming up pale and sinister around him -  “Think these ladies want more than just a piece of me - besides you’re here aren’t you?”

They pulled him free with a mighty heave, the mermaids hissing and flailing at the edge of the tideline, the Doctor kicking one back as Martha hauled Jack further up the beach.

“Usually –” the Doctor grumbled coming back up to join them panting on the sand. “One screams for help when, for example, attacked by killer mermaids.”

“Told you -” Jack was taking off his boots, shaking out the sand somewhat ineffectually given they were drenched – “It didn’t seem stunningly helpful given the circumstances. I was _grunting_ if that makes you feel better.”

“Next time, suppose we _don’t_ follow the spooky little siren song to the sea in the first place?”

“What can I say? Susceptible to the charms of all.”

“Oh you would, Jack. Only you could hear the song of a murderous mermaid and think, _Oh I know what, I think I’ll tap that –_ what? _”_

He turned to Martha at the end, who was staring at him with a speechless expression of incredulity.

“I just saw you – kick a mermaid – in the face.”

“Did you _see_ its face?”

“Yes but – kick a mermaid _in the face,”_ she blinked rapidly, trying to dispel the image “That’s my childhood ruined, that is.”

“You’re just saying that ‘cause you’ve never seen one of those things come at you underwater. Talk about childhood ruiners, all black empty eyes and finned claws, all white and sudden slipping out of the dark – and the _teeth_ – nasty things mermaids, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Shall we get back inside?”

__x__

The ship spins out into space again, no specific destination as yet, just, as the Doctor puts it, _anywhere but here._

“So Doctor,” Jack says, when they are all dry and sat down again, the Doctor tapping his fingers restlessly on a chair arm, Jack on the move, changing out of his wet things “-did you do it? Find the egg in the box under the tree and destroy it like the firebird said?”

“Yeah –” The Doctor nods, but distantly, as though his mind is elsewhere – “Oh yeah we did that, but I’m not sure the firebird was telling the whole story – because – well because for starters it’s not over.”

“Yeah I’ve been thinking about that,” Jack says, surprising him – “The story of a magician, he put his soul in an egg and buried it in a box beneath a tree – I’ve heard it before –”

“Really?” The Doctor looks at him for the first time with real interest – “Where?”

“See I’ve been thinking about it,” Jack nods, sitting down with them – “First I thought _Harry Potter_ – don’t laugh –” Nobody was.

“Because isn’t that how you make a horcrux? Only in the original story, he only made one, but in Harry Potter there are what – seven? But it’s still essentially the same thing, right?”

“Go on.”

“Anyway I remembered, there was a Russian folktale – hell maybe that’s where good old JK got the idea in the first place – a sorcerer who could take out part of his soul and put it in a previously inanimate object so he couldn’t be killed at least without destroying the object – _Koschei the Deathless,_ it was called sometimes, _Koschei the Immortal_ – Doctor? Doctor are you alright?”

The Doctor had shot to his feet, hands clutching his hair, yelling wordlessly and pacing, yelling again, hitting the console panel and making the ship shudder and swerve, hitting it again, swiping out in a rage at everything within reach, steering himself mercifully away from the controls and punching the wall as if in hope that it would break him.

“I knew it!” he exploded as soon as he could make words come out, Martha and Jack staring at him in alarm. “I bloody knew it! Soon as that thing hurt me, I _knew-_ oh the idiot, the absolute idiot, stupid, stupid, stupid –”

“Doctor what –”

“Wait –” Martha said slowly – “I know that name – _Koschei –”_ The Doctor stopped and stared at her, partly in surprise at what she was saying, partly because hearing her say that name, hearing them both throw it around like that made him want to be sick, swallowing it down with a ball of rage so as to be able to hear Martha’s words –

“Doctor - I’ve heard you - say that name in your sleep.”

Well that stopped him dead and cold down the spine. That and the fact that the way she said _say_ made him know he had screamed it, whimpered it, whispered, sobbed and moaned that name on too many of the times he had foolishly fallen asleep around them. Something, he decided right at that instant he was never going to be stupid enough to do again. Of course it escaped him in his sleep, he had been stupid to think he could keep something that huge, that burning inside him down at all times. He looked up from his pit of self-assault to see the both of them looking at him expectantly.

“Doctor?” Martha frowned.

“Yeah come on then Doctor –” Jack added – “Who is he?”

__x__


	3. Chapter 3

**3.**

_Who is he?_ The question echoed like a ghost, howling through all the empty hollow spaces in the Doctor’s head; stirring up the dust on everything he would have preferred to keep buried, licking through all the raw and ragged holes in his hearts – _the places you left empty_ he thought, - _the parts of me you hollowed out and never filled in again. You took so much of me, now you’re taking yourself apart too? Of course. Of course you are._ He opened and closed his mouth too many times, almost but not quite forming the name that was so easy for the others to say, oblivious to the travesty of their utterances, and which he was appalled, shattered but not surprised to discover – spilled out from him in his sleep. Again of course, of _course_ it did, the dreams he so often had.

His lips moved around the edges of that word, caressed it lighter than a feather, but it still stung him raw. If he _could_ say it, if he could diminish even a little of its power to hurt him. But he could not and would not; he did not deserve to suffer less than he does from this.

He stared ahead for a while unblinking; the other two may as well have not been there, he stared sightlessly, captivated by the voice in his head, a voice he remembered like little else, with inflections so like his own before they were changed by time and loss and grief. It was his voice once. _Oh yes_ he thought _I remember. I remember who I was when I was young and unafraid to say your name. Koschei, Koschei, my Koschei – spilled out like the most exuberant breathless prayer, no church could raise it higher than adolescent excitement and devotion – will you, can I, should we? My love, my life, my everything; can I say it? I’m going to love you forever!_

_Flinging himself on his back in the grass, more than half naked and blinking in the sunlight._

_“You can’t,” Koschei smiles, half laughing half dreamy, heady with the thought of it in a rare unguarded moment, giddy and open from sunlight and sex and temporary freedom, squinting up at the sun and spiraling their names with fingertips on each other’s arms – “Remember what they said in class the other day – never say forever unless you’ve given due and thorough thought to how long that could be.”_

_He breaks off a blade of grass and bothers Theta with it. It tickles and he laughs and they fight and it’s good, it’s so good._

He remembered, he heard it all, not as though it were the past but in his head in the present, heard his own voice as clearly as if he had spoken.

 _“But I_ have _given it thought Kosch, and I know it. A cosmos without you just doesn’t bear thinking about. That’s never going to change, I know it.”_

Theta haunts him now almost as much as Koschei – that boy he was, so unafraid, so certain of their future that he could throw that name around in diminished form as though it did not matter, as though he would have all the time in all the worlds to keep saying it. As though nothing could change them or who they were.

“Doctor?” A voice broke rudely in. “Doctor, talk to us – you know this – person?”

He came back as though from far away, Martha and Jack staring at him with urgency and concern. He felt ill. He did not know if it was the memories or a continuation of the pain that hit him when they destroyed the egg. Like he might be sick, or fall over, or both.

“Yeah,” he said slowly, eventually, trying to focus, licking lips that had gone dry – “Yeah I knew him. He was a Time Lord – we were –” he ran a hand down his face hard enough to bring sensation back, shake him back to them – “We were at the Academy together, we were –” he paused just long enough for doubt – “ –friends,” he said, but in a way that makes both Martha and Jack look at him for more. _(Love you Koschei, I will love you forever)_ Like just talking about it out loud is some kind of betrayal – “I mean yeah – I mean more than friends really yeah – all through school and I mean a hundred years or so of school – sounds like human hell I guess but for us it was –”  _(Wonderful, it was wonderful, it was everything I ever wanted)_ “ – and after everything we went through – initiation – all of space and time – I mean – what it all did to us- what we were and I mean we shared _everything_ , cut class together, grew up together –”

“You were lovers.” He nodded, wincing, knowing Jack was trying to help him out but it jarred all the same. Martha shot Jack a frown and Jack shrugged –

“It was obvious”.

“Yeah,” the Doctor said vaguely, scowling, staring at nothing for a minute _(Your hand in mine and I could not always tell us apart, your heart between my hearts, your mind my mind, oh, the loss should not still feel so raw)_ – “Yeah I mean it doesn’t sound right though – I don’t think there’s a word for it for us – everything –” He stopped. Everything. Well that’s it. That’s the word. He looked at them looking at him, Martha thinking _he loved like this and it never went away and he never said why wouldn’t he say especially when I –_ and Jack watching him, working things out – _He thinks he’s the only one to ever feel that deeply. Well don’t we all?_ It’s hardly telepathy for him to know what they’re both thinking.

“So what happened?” Martha asked and Jack a half step ahead –

“Yeah, what went wrong?”

“Oh god,” he groaned because where does he start? It wasn’t me, it was him? Because this is what he has always tried to hold on to, but it’s not quite true is it? It was him too. He cannot (though he does) pretend to be blameless, after all he was the one who ran away, ran so fast from that much love because he knew, he was coming to know just how much he could do for it, how much he could destroy.

“Come on Doctor tell us, ‘cause I’m getting the idea you didn’t just drift apart”.

He barked a laugh – “No”

“Bad break up?” _Oh, thank you Martha._

“Oh god. You could say that. You really could –” then why did he find he wanted to say _no actually. We didn’t, we haven’t – broken yes, apart yes, but not really, not the way she means it._

“He never had any regard for life,” he said, eventually, realising as soon as he opened his mouth that here he was again, switching all of the blame _(coward)_ – “he could never just explore, just see things – he had to own them, control them, and if he couldn’t, he’d just destroy them – oh, I mean come on you two you’re both clever people you must have worked it out.”

Jack nodded grimly –

“The Master.”

The Doctor nodded; Martha shot to her feet –

“ _WHAT?”_

 _“Koschei the immortal._ ” Jack looks at the Doctor steadily – “It’s the Master. Great.”

“Yeah, if you could just stop saying that –”

“What – Koschei?”

“Stop it. Stop it stop it stop it.”

He could tell from the way Jack was glaring at him that he would have liked to do it again, as though Jack knew how it ripped at him to hear it every time and did not care. He did not. Mostly because of Martha –

“I don’t _believe_ this!” she fumed – “You’re telling us the Master’s your ex-boyfriend?”

“Yeah, um those really wouldn’t be the words I’d use –”

“What? Ex or boyfriend?”

“Um – either?”

“I don’t believe this,” she said again – “You’re saying you’re still – I don’t know – _together?”_

“No I’m not –”

“You still love him.” She stopped pacing to throw the punch.

“Oh come on Martha, of course he does, it was obvious!”

“After everything that happened? I risked my life for a year for you, my family were tortured – Jack was – and you were what? Having a lover’s tiff?”

“It wasn’t like that – you don’t understand.”

“Well, that’s stating the obvious, Doctor.”

“Alright. Right. Right. Can we all just calm down? And if I don’t hear the words _obvious_ , _ex,_ or _boyfriend_ again I swear it will be too soon. Martha, sit down.”

Martha did sit down, though she did so in a way that made it clear she was not happy about it or anything else.

“We need to put together what we know and what we don’t know. There’s a lot that’s good here.” He was not quite sure who he was trying to convince, quite. The others looked at him skeptically, as though thinking the same.

“We know it’s the Master that’s been putting out the stars, what we don’t know is why.” He tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair thoughtfully for a bit before passing on – “So we know he’s alive.”

“You must be delighted,” Martha muttered quietly, looking down. The Doctor stared at her with such icy cold that she looked away quickly and did not say anything else (he _was_ though, oh he was, like the dead thing that had taken root in his chest in place of his hearts was living again, squirming with hope).

“So we know he’s split himself into horcruxes – I wonder what happened? Did the story you mentioned inspire him or did he inspire the story?”

“It’s hundreds of years old –”

“ _We’re_ hundreds of years old.” They all notice that he says _we_ and not just _he._ There is an awkward beat while they all consider how easily it comes back to him to do so, the way only siblings or couples can do.

“So anyway, the good thing is we know now where the horcruxes will be and how many there will be –”

“We do? How?”

“I know him. There’ll be seven – and I can take a good guess to what some of them are. We found the egg, that just leaves six –”

“Well that’s good, isn’t it?” Jack stood up as though ready to go and track them down that instant – “We can find these things and destroy them and we’re good right?”

“No –” The Doctor stood up quickly, as though he might need to hold Jack back, suddenly they were all standing up – “not now. Not now we know what we know.”

“What?”

“We’re not going to destroy them now,” the Doctor said, trying to be patient while his hearts raced – “We’re going to protect them.”

__x__

 

 **I am sooooo not happy with not actually being able to write The Master in this fic yet! I do nto like it when things are not all about him ( but of course neither does he so we have this in common :-P) - just gonna have to continue with flashbacks until he shows face I guess. Btw, i sooo don't have enough people to doctor/ master fangirl with so if anyone wants me I am** _magpie-in-the-shade_ on tumblr. :-)


	4. Chapter 4

 

**4.--**

For a moment they all stared at each other, pleading in the Doctor’s eyes and resigned anger in Jack’s. Martha took a deep breath, nostrils flaring –

“Can we land this somewhere?” she snapped tersely, thin lipped – “I think I need to go for a walk. A long one.”

Several moments of tense silence followed in which the Doctor appeared to punch, drag and generally manhandle the ship’s controls; a few minutes later they juddered jerkily to a halt. Martha stared at the doctor for a moment, as though challenging him, certainly expecting something she did not proceed to get.

“Right then,” she said, and swung out the door alone.

“She’ll be alright I take it?” Jack still had not stood up.

“What?”

“This planet – you’ve landed us somewhere it’s safe for her to stomp off in, I guess?”

“Of course,” the Doctor frowned, distracted – “Of course I have. What do you take me for?”

“Not sure I always know.”

“Look, you’re perfectly welcome to stomp off too –” The Doctor snapped but a moment later relented, softened the glare he was shooting Jack and sank down into the chair opposite him – “I wouldn’t blame you.” He sighed, looking at his hands, the walls, the chair arm – anywhere but Jack.

“Wouldn’t you?”

The Doctor looked up cagily, Jack’s very still thoughtfulness beginning to unnerve him a little –

“Because sometimes, Doctor I’m not sure I know you at all, let alone trust you.”

“You shouldn’t,” the Doctor levelled with him, eyes glittering and narrow – “You don’t. I don’t ask people to travel with me so they can get to _know_ me.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m suspecting.”

“Look, if you’re that angry with me, just leave. I never expect you to stay. I never expect any of you to stay.”

There was a rawness to the admission that made Jack nod, almost if not quite relenting –

“Now that I do believe – but then, if you don’t mind me saying –”

“Oh, I think we’re past _minding,_ don’t you?”

“If you don’t mind me saying, I can’t help but wonder why? Aren’t you the one who always leaves first? Isn’t that what you said yourself? I remember when you told us you’d been running since the untempered schism – didn’t really think about it at the time – but yeah – it’s you, isn’t it? You’re the one who always leaves – or pushes us away first so you don’t have to. Tell me, Doctor, were any of us ever anything more than an attempt to fill a void? Even Rose?”

“Don’t you –”

“No, I think I will though. You think the rest of us can’t know how it feels – can’t ever be as lonely as you – but we’ve all lost people, Doctor, we all have gaps we try to fill. So tell me – were we ever more than filler? Any of us?”

The silence went on too long.

“How do I answer that?” the Doctor said finally.

:”If it were untrue, you’d deny it.”

“You don’t want truth.”

“Yeah. Yeah I do.”

 

“You’re brilliant. Really. All of you. I only travel with people who are brilliant.”

“I’m hearing a but.”

“But no. No you don’t fill the gap he left. Happy now?”

“No more than you are, Doctor, but I appreciate the honesty. Now what happens next?”

“You’re not going?”

“I’m not going.”

“You’re not angry?”

“Sometimes, Doctor you’re profoundly stupid. Of course I’m angry. I don’t think I need to start listing all the reasons why. But that’s a little irrelevant when we have a universe to save, don’t you think? Or are we not doing that anymore?”

“Save the universe. Yeah. Yeah we’re doing that –”

The Doctor wished all of a sudden he could just be where other people were not. At least everybody but one. _Where are you?_  he thought. _Koschei, my Koschei- where are you? What did I do this time? How do I make it better? This is wrong, this is all wrong._

“I’m hearing another but. Or at any rate like save the universe has slipped down your priority list, what is it now – save the Master?”

“Oh come on –” he stopped, decided against lying – “Yes. Yes of course. Isn’t it always?”

_Hasn’t it always been? Was there ever a time when it wasn’t his deepest wish. Wasn’t it behind the name after all, just like the Master said and he did not say what he should have done then (you. You’re the one I want to make better, only ever you and you won’t let me). But how? And that’s always been the question._

“Yeah, I was afraid of that. This all was a whole lot simpler when evil-sorcerer guy wasn’t your…your ….see I’m trying to say this without using any of your banned words –”

“I get the general gist.” The Doctor slumped forward gloomily.

“Anyway, we still need to find the other six items right? Whatever it is we – you – now plan to do with them – which would be what exactly?”

”I have no idea – I mean – can these things be reversed?”

“It’s like a soul I guess? A soul split into pieces? Is that a thing you could fix – I mean ever? And _Jesus_ , why would somebody do that? Take themselves apart like that?”

“Oh, it was only a matter of time –” he tried to shrug it off, and certainly sounded flip enough, though the next part fell tragic in its wake – “He was always taking himself apart.”

He felt his lip quiver round the words and stood up quickly –

“I should probably – er –” he fought down the rising knot in his throat, swallowed it hard, speechless for a moment, standing up restlessly –

 _What did I do? Was it me? Did you take yourself apart out of spite? What was it? Just another in a long line of methods of self destruction? Or was it preservation? Did you even think it through? Did it hurt? Was it me? Do you_ want _me to fix you? Do you want to break yourself more? What do I do? Why put out the stars? Was it me? Was I something I said? Something I did? It’s always me in the end isn’t it? I mean, not being big headed or anything but aren’t I always your reason just like you’re mine?_

“What, Doctor? Go for a long walk in the opposite direction from Martha? That’s hardly gonna help us any.”

“No, you’re right,” he sat down again – “We should –” he found he did not quite know.

“About the stars though – you think we should work out a motive?”

 _It’s me,_ he thought again- _somehow, it’s almost certainly me._

“No,” he said –“no, probably no need. We should get these things together. In fact –” he got up again – “If I suspect correctly, and I usually do – I reckon one of them – at _least_ one of them will still be here. Wait a sec.”

He darted off, leaving Jack alone, staring ahead of him at nothing, and wandered the TARDIS corridors for longer than need be rather than admit to Jack how quickly he would take to find the thing – that he knew exactly where it was and always had.

 _Do you think –_ the voices came back to him out of the past, so close, too close, his own fault for holding the two of them always as they once were between his hearts – _Do you think there’ll be time? Even for us – to do every brilliant thing in the universe?_

_Well, we’re Time Lords- we can make time._

_Sometimes I wish I could split myself into pieces – well into pieces just loads of me, so we could do everything I wanted to be doing at once. There’s so much fun to be had – and one of me to sit in class while the rest of us have it._

_Kosch, one of you is work enough, how could I cope with a whole group of you?_

_Oh, you’d love it. Besides, we could make loads of you too. Imagine if the whole universe was just you and me._

_I love you. There_ is _just you and me._

 _You’re an idiot. Sweet, but an idiot._ _I wish there were a million of me, a million of me to do the million things I want to do, with you, always with you, every one of me._

_You’re enough, you’ll always be enough._

He wondered why he always came out of these memories blinking, why it always seemed in the dream as though the sun had been always in their eyes back then, glittering off all those hopes and dreams. He took a deep breath, hearing his hearts beat in his ears, remembering how he used to hear that rhythm in his head – or if not his own head than a head so close to his it made no difference. He blocked it out, he blocked it all out, and returned to Jack in the console room with professor Yana’s pocket watch.

__x__


	5. Chapter 5

  1.   




Jack looked at him expectantly, but for a long time he sat more than half oblivious to it, running his fingers around the smooth and the grooves of the watch, tracing the curves and curls of it. _Just a watch now._ He remembered thinking it when he found it among the professor’s clothes, strewn across his own bedroom floor. He could almost have smiled at realising the Master, newly regenerated, had gone straight there to change. As though the room were still theirs, as it had been enough times in the past.

As he sat there, turning and idly/ not quite idly stroking the watch, Martha came back in with a gust of air from inside, nodded to Jack and sat back down, looking over at the Doctor just as he did, frowning in recognition –

“Is that -?”

“Professor Yana’s,” the Doctor said, flipping it open quicker than Martha could shout –

“Oh my god – don’t!”  He closed it again, flipped it back and forth a few times.

“It’s just a watch now Martha,” he smiled tightly – “Or at any rate, so I thought.”

He fell quiet again, leaving the other two looking at each other and shrugging. He was half trapped in a circle of thought, thinking about Yana, about their brief time together, about everything about that man that he had so instantly liked (loved? Too little time, too soon to tell, but yes, yes almost certainly) wishing, as he always wished about just about everything, that they had had more time. Even ever since he had not really had time to think about the little they had, or perhaps that was a lie and in truth he had never wanted to think about it too much, knowing the pain the thought was likely to end in. He wondered now how much of the Master there had been in the good professor. He thought about being John Smith, how it was him and also was not. How in retrospect he thought it was like a straightjacket to his personality but at the time? At the time he had felt peaceful, like someone he could have been, given the chance and the quiet; someone not good perhaps but far from all bad and only slightly dangerous.

He wondered if it was the same with Yana; if Yana had been someone the Master could have been without all the things that had pushed them apart. He had been so brilliant, so innocent somehow, curious and quick and interested in everything just like – yes there it was, the pain that had stopped him thinking about this – just like Koschei. Being human had made him seem so young again, so separate from all the trappings of their eternal responsibilities. Looking back on the brief moments they had spent together had the same feeling as looking back at the distant past, all their near eternal running and laughing and fighting, working together and playing together and sometimes it was not quite clear which was which, looking at each other in the midst of wild experiment with fire dancing in their eyes. He closed his eyes against it.

“So?” Martha said, digging in her pocket – “Basilisk tooth?”

The Doctor cupped his hands around the watch, pulling it against his chest fast. He would still feel the pain there, the stab he had felt when they destroyed the egg. He wondered if it was just the pain of the injury they must have done the Master, or something else.

“No,” he said quickly – “No – ah – that’s right, you missed that part,” he looked away from her guiltily.

“We’re not destroying the horcruxes anymore,” Jack explained wearily – “We’re – what was it Doctor? Protecting them, you said?”

Martha rolled her eyes but restrained herself from comment.

“Restoring them,” the Doctor said, thinking about it only as the words came out – “If we can.”

  
“You mean –” Martha frowned – “Removing the bits of soul that have split and sending them back to their original source?”

“Putting it all back together again, yes.”

“And that’s – sorry if I’m being a pain here, Doctor – that’s going to bring the stars back and stop the Master how? – or hadn’t you thought about that?”

He swallowed hard. He hadn’t. This was the problem; he sunk back again for a moment, too full of reflection and hurt. This was the problem, wasn’t it? He put the Master first; he _always_ put the Master first – these days at least, and too late perhaps. He leapt to the thought of saving him from the idiocy he had done himself and would just leave the stars to go out if it was not for his companions. He had to drag himself even to caring about the rest of the universe when compared to the Master’s safety. Here was a road of thought that he could not go down, leading to truths worse than he could admit about himself and his priorities; what he could do given the chance.

“We’ll have to find him,” he said – “Talk to him.”

“What – ask him nicely if he’ll stop destroying things?”

“Because that worked so well before,” Martha added.

“Alright shut up both of you, just shut up! We don’t have time to argue about this –”

“So what – we do what you say without question? What exactly are we here for then, Doctor?”

The Doctor looked at her directly for the first time since she had come in. For a moment, just a brief moment before he could stop himself, he smirked at the look of shock on her face. It must have been the hard brightness of his glare, the fast-ebbing removal of his capacity to care, exactly as he had feared. _This is why I left_ he thought; _this is what you do to me, how much worse could you make me?_

“Good question Martha.” He says it brightly and when the brightness fades it leaves only an order, harshly snapped out – “Get out, both of you.”

“What?”

“No way!”

“No –”

“You can’t do this! You need us?”

“Do I Jack? Like Martha said what for? I don’t have time to argue and you can’t help with this. You don’t even fill the void, remember?”

Jack tried to outstare him for a long moment, failed and put his hand on Martha’s back.

“Come on, Martha.”

“What? No? You can’t do this alone, Doctor!”

“I’m always alone,” he said flatly, closing the door behind them – “Sometimes it’s better without the company.”

He pushed himself against the door in closing it, leaning heavily against it for the briefest of moments before announcing –

“Right!” to the room at large. He slipped his hand into his pocket, wondering when he had put the watch in there for safe keeping, wondering why touching it made him feel the pull of the other five as strongly as if he could see them, scattered through time and space. It felt as though there were at least three pulling at him from a similar place and this made sense knowing that the Master would be one as well as have one. He would have to leave them until last, he thought, then there was one that he could not locate, leaving him no option but to set his course for the distant future and to stage a crash landing with his own future TARDIS.

__x__

 

**Sorry for the wait on this bit and that it's super short, I've been mega ill these last two weeks. However the next section is underway, longer and will have Missy in it :-)**


	6. Chapter 6

**6.**

“What the -?”

He stumbled out of his TARDIS into the TARDIS beside him, on a remote planet somewhere in the 25th century, blinking around him in horror and disorientation. It never felt right doing this to begin with, and for a moment it felt like this was a home rather than a ship. A home in which someone had been having a party. There were takeaway boxes piled by the door, streamers and silly string across the console, an enormous coffee table piled too high with mugs and books and….toys – some of which he was not sure he wanted to look at closer – and by the table a battered leather sofa on which two people had fallen asleep; messily it seemed, in an ungainly pile of limbs, partially covered by a jumble of multi colored throws and cushions. Cushions spilled out across the TARDIS floor as he picked his way across it as well, all colours and shades as though someone had upended an enormous tube of plushie sweets, glowing in the colours from the console lights. In his pocket the watch reverberated beneath his hand as though it were alive and could feel the presence of another piece of itself, and he saw it, propped up against the sofa itself, his hand tightening around the watch. He had not stopped touching it since he rediscovered it, he realized; needing it close to him, in his hand- needing, he supposed to feel the life in it, the energy that seemed to speak to his blood more intimately that he wanted to acknowledge.

He knelt down beside the sofa as softly as a cat, closing his hand around the umbrella without ever taking his eye off where it rested, just against the thigh of the woman on the outside. He had stopped breathing, and started to dare to hope he had it, just about to ease it away when a hand shot out of the throw pile and grabbed him with surprisingly vicious strength around the wrist.

“Don’t eeeeven think about it.”

He looked up and she was staring at him out of one bright eye, the other still resolutely closed as though that way half of her could stay asleep, or at least stay in denial at having to wake. “Oh,” she added, blinked hugely several times, and nodded at him. “It’s you. Just a sec.”

She eased herself up, using him as a handhold, pulling the umbrella back towards herself with extreme intent, yawning like a cat and swinging her legs round while looking him up and down appraisingly –

“Mmm,” she shrugged finally. “Pretty. Bit stringy, I remember. Not bad, but mine’s better.”

“Your what – wait –” he found himself blinking back, confused “You’re –”

“Darling, catch up.” She sighed. “I’m _the Master_ – or will be, anyway, as far as you’re concerned.”

“You’re -?” he shook his head. Of course. Of course he had taken objects out of all his own timelines and put them back altered. He wondered if the other versions even knew. He wondered if she could be asked. “So who’s –” he jerked his head towards the sleeping figure, barely discernible beneath the throws and cushions. The look he got back told him he was being very, very stupid.

“She’s your improvement,” the lady said, smiling at the lump with unmistakable affection (adoration? Was it adoration? Just for a moment he remembered being looked at like that.) His hearts hurt to see the way she tucked the covers back in around her, the way her fingers hesitated in a stroke to the blonde head.

“Alright, let’s do this –” she said, turning back to face him – “Over there though. Wouldn’t want to wake her.”

They retreated to the far end, by the TARDIS door.

“Alright then,” she said, arms folded sternly across her chest. “What’s he done this time? Or should I say, what have I done?”

“You’re really the Master?”

“Oh, my sweet _Rassilon_ , yes. Call me Missy.”

“And that’s –”

“The _Doc-tor.”_ She said it as though he would need to see her lips move to understand it. “We won’t get very far if you keep up this rate, you know.”

“I know, but maybe – maybe you should put some clothes on, I’m finding it a bit –”

“Awkward?” she grinned “Distracting? Nefarious? Arousing? Hey, get you a girl can do them all. Oh wait, you will- where was I. Oh yes. Asking the questions. What do you want with my umbrella? It’s _so_ not you. Get your own.”

“So….no clothes then.”

“Thank you, I’m quite comfortable.”

“I’m so glad.”

“Now come on, what’s the naughty boy done? Should I say, _this_ time?”

“You’re – he’s –“ What else could he do? “He’s divided his soul into horcruxes and now he’s putting out the stars.”

“Ohhhh,” Missy tutted, smirking – “How very _him._ So what did you do?”

“Well, I destroyed one of the horcruxes – before I knew!” he put his hands up defensively at the glare she shot him – “And now I’m trying to reassemble the others so we can put his soul back where it belongs.”

“Well that’s nice, but I meant what did you do to make him mad?”

“Me? Why would it be –” he trailed off, remembering that he had told himself before over and over that it had to have been something he had done, that it was always something he had done.

“Oh Doctor stop. I can hear the noise from here – shall I tell you?”

She stepped a little closer to him, putting a gentle hand between his hearts, which he feared would stop beating at the touch. He wanted to look away from her eyes more than he had wanted to look away from the rest of her but once again he could not. They saw through him as though he was glass. _Oh god,_ he thought, looking at her looking through him, seeing him; he could feel her _seeing him_ ripping through him, eviscerating him. He could – he staggered a little – he could feel her in his head, slipping in as though it was easy. He was going to cry. He let his head fall back, stared up at the ceiling to stop the tears before they came – he was going to cry because he loved her and he could feel that she loved him. Of course he loved her. He swallowed. He wasn’t ready.

“Too late dear, sorry,” she whispered – “Just a mo.” She darted across the room quickly and came back with a large blanket wrapped around her, took his hand and dragged him into a small booth just off the console room where she hugged him at so strange an angle his tears got lost and all but placed him into an armchair.

“Missy –” he whispered, feeling as though everything was falling rapidly out of his grasp – “What are you doing?”

“Well I’m giving you a hug and making you tea, silly, what does it look like?”

“What _happened?”_

“You’re gonna have to narrow that one down a bit.”

“To you? What happened to you? How did you get like this?”

“What? Beautiful? Charming? Bananas? I’ve always been like this.”

“ _Kind._ Compassionate. Brave. How did you let it all come back?”

“Long story.” She sat across from him, drinking tea – “too long if you’re as busy as you sound, but y’know, the usual – several hundred years in a vault, all that. Now, shall I tell you why I’m putting out the stars?”

“Anything you can tell me, yeah.”

“It’s really very simple Doctor, and of course I can’t speak for him, not _entirely,_ but I’m going to take a guess it’s because you said you’d visit them with him and you didn’t. That’s all.”

“That was _centuries_ ago – why now?”

“Feel like a long time, does it?” she flashed her teeth as she said it in something that was not quite a smile, the words cutting archly between them. He looked away.

“No,” she nodded. “I didn’t think so. It doesn’t for him either, and he’s not.”

“Not what?”

“Brave – poor thing, or kind. Or if he is, it’s so far buried you’ll have a hell of a job digging it up. But good luck, rather you than me!”

“You’re saying it’s hopeless? Wait – have you – _met_ him?”

“Only the once. He killed me. I killed him. There was a whole big killing thing and some – other things. Times were had. Here I am. Whoopsie. Here she is, and we’re happy, Doctor- but you’re probably not supposed to know that yet. Anyway I’m guessing my brolly’s a horcrux? That is pretty nifty.”

A part of him wanted to hold his head tight together between his two hands with the nightmare of keeping up with her, another part – an older, rustier part was _used_ to this, remembered it, that fast rattling off of thoughts, the quick-fire dart of conversation. She was so strange and yet so familiar it hurt more than just his head.

“Can I borrow it?”

“And make it not a horcrux?”

“If I can, yes.”

“You’ll bring it back.”

“Yes.”

“Then yes. Enjoy.”

“Really?”

“Yes!” It felt too easy. So easy he almost felt a bit deflated. He wondered when he got like this; unprepared to go into any situation not fighting. How could it be that she was the one who could show him up for this?

“It’s because I’m your better half, dear.”

“Okay, stop that!”

“Stop what?” Her eyes were too innocent.

“Reading my mind. Stop it.”

“Why? He doesn’t.”

“He doesn’t?”

“Never.”

“But –”

“You remember when I told you I was never the one who ran, Doctor- that was always you?”

“No.”

“Oh no, well I suppose you wouldn’t. Anyway I did. Very clever of me. But it’s true you know, you did and you _do_ know it, I can tell.” She tapped the side of her head, grinning, but her eyes weren’t smiling, they cut into him more directly than he (the coward) could stand.

“There’s different ways to run away Doctor. You think he’d be so mad if you only ran away on foot? He’s just trying to get your attention. He’s _always_ just trying to get your attention.”

“You sound like you feel sorry for him.”

  
“ _Duh.”_

“But – but anyway that’s ridiculous! You – he doesn’t have to blow up planets. He wants my attention, he could just ask. He could always just ask!”

“You could have just asked me to borrow the brolly, but no, you tried to sneak it out of my cold dead hand –”

“You were asleep.”

“Whatever. Somewhere we’re having a terrible communication problem Doctor, and I can tell you for real that it’s not just me. Go. Sort out. Bring my brolly back fixed – ‘cause quite frankly having a bit of his soul hanging around _is_ kinda skeevy. Thanks –”

Across the room several cushions fell from the sofa and skidded across the floor; the bundled up pile moved and heaved like the back of a whale breaking the surface of the sea and an arm broke out from the throw pile, reaching and flapping helplessly. A sleepy voice grumbled out a long whine –

“ _Koscheiiii –”_

Missy grinned, every bit of warmth darting back into her eyes like birds.

“That’s my cue. Lovely to meet you dear, do sort it out. Also- Tissue Compression Eliminator.”

“What?”

“ _Tissue compression eliminator_. Just saying.”

“Wait –”

As she got up, he suddenly felt a terrible need for her not to leave, catching her hand and leaping up himself – “Missy I –” It almost came straight out of him, the need filling him so much the words nearly shot out of his mouth straight from his chest – _I love you_ – just to say it, just for once, to mean it and have it accepted. She flicked a finger quickly but not ungently up to his lips, stopping him.

“Dearest –” He swallowed; her hand gently cupped his face. It felt like – but perhaps it was silly – but it felt like forgiveness, absolution – he did not know he had needed that. She whispered it close to his cheek – “ _I know._ Tell _him._ ” Another, this time inarticulate, whining noise came from the sofa – “Gotta go. Work it out alright? Don’t make me come knock your heads together.”

He swallowed, let her go, frowned just on the point of turning away and turned back –

“ _Koschei?_ ”

She smiled, a smile that had wondered how long it would take him.

“I _know,_ right?”

“But – how?”

She just smiled again.

“Because I am.” She shrugged. “You’ll get there.”

 _Will we?_ he wondered, he did not mean to but he searched her mind for any colour of a lie. If it was, she hid it well. At the door, on the verge of leaving, he heard something else; something that made his already pulled and dragged upon hearts stretch so tight he wondered how they kept beating.

“I’m here –” Missy’s voice, gentle, like a caress, as she snuggled back into the pile on the sofa, into greedy arms that grabbed at her happily – “My Theta, I’m here.”

He swallowed and did not look back. He went out the door, hands fisted almost painfully with the effort of not rubbing the wetness from his face.

__x__

 

**Now I'm thinking I need to write a whole other fic when I'm done with this on just to explore this AU with Missy/ 13 some more what do people think? I think I kinda love them....:-)**

e


	7. Chapter 7

 

**7.**

**_“_ ** _Koschei, come back to bed!”_

_“No! I’m awake. You get up!”_

_“Kooooscheeeiiii –”_

_“Stop that.”_

_“Why - is it working?”_

_“Oh, for goodness sake.”_

_Laughter and gentleness surrounds him, all that exuberance, echoing up from the past in ripples and waves; too many could knock him over, not even that many more. Oh, he thinks, blinded with the flash of looking back, how bright we shone, how fierce we burned, couldn’t have told us, not for a second, that we would not have kept burning forever._

_“Kiss me.”_

_“Oh kiss yourself.”_

_“Kosch!”_

_But he’s back, he always came back and those eyes flashing brightness and warmth and mischief  and love and all these terrible time wasting activities the adults would never understand and they promise they won’t grow up and be like that and they promise to keep kissing, keep touching, keep close, keep running, keep together, hands together and moving as one, always, always always._

_Kiss me, hold me, love me, stay –_

_One promise broken and they all come crashing down._

He felt the weight of it heavy around him, the whisper of their voices rattling round and round him like a wind, hurting him with closeness and with distance all at once.

_You, always you- love, life, everything, oh I remember, I remember how you loved me, I saw it in her eyes and I remember and remember and remember. It was tearing me already before I ever saw her and now –_

He crumples, just inside the door, one horcrux cradled like a child in his arms, the other burning like a brand through his pocket into his leg, marking him –

_But I’m marked already, marked a long time, burning, your name always burning like a brand between my hearts where you stamped them, took them, made the yours forever and I –_

He wished he could sink through the floor. If he could have moved he might have crawled under a duvet and stayed there – he felt as though he could stay hidden, stay down and dark for centuries, forever, felt a feeling of heaviness and hopelessness he does not remember having since perhaps his sixth regeneration. _Because I failed you, because this is my fault, because I can’t do this anymore._

He could drown in memories, hurl himself back in his mind into a time that was good, was happy, even when he was sad and angry there was life in it and adventure and the prospect of adventure, so much of everything to come and he had thrown it away.

And he’d tried. He convinces himself of it constantly – he _did_ try. He turned back as soon as he realized the mistake he had made and came home. But it wasn’t home because he wasn’t there and when he found him again he was not him and nothing he could do could bring about even reconciliation, let alone a return to the life he remembered.

So loneliness then. He had reconciled himself to it; belligerently wanted it, forced himself not to know that loneliness only meant _being without you_. But the universe hadn’t let him. The universe – it was all people, a long line of people refusing to let him just die inside himself like he could easily have done without them. First Susan, forcing him to care, and slowly others, unwilling and furious though he had been at first to let them in. Thinking about it now, he cannot imagine why most of them tolerated him; his moods and his sulks and his frequent disregard. _I’ll just go on regenerating until all my lives are spent_ he had said gloomily one day to that poor girl who was only trying to help - and what a burden it had felt, and how little he thought she could understand, the intolerable weight of being himself after everything he had ruined. So the Master was putting out the stars? Yes. He supposed he could hardly blame him; it would have been so easy for them to have turned out exactly the same. Let the universe die, it had nothing to do with him anymore.

“Right!” a voice yelled, and the door he was leaning against was yanked open. He fell back suddenly and horribly, sprawling head first out of the door – “I think that’s quite enough nonsense, don’t you?”

“Whaaa?” he sat up awkwardly, trying to rub everything that now hurt at once.

“Oh you think it hurts now? Just be glad it’s me and not her!”

Missy gestured emphatically to the other TARDIS – “If either of us have to hear one more moment of that _Oh woe my whole existence_ crap then she’ll be joining me in coming to do you a damage, get it? And trust me, she’s less forgiving than I am.”

He looked behind her nervously to see if anyone else was coming out.

“She’s _trying_ to sleep – if it wasn’t for all the racket your brain was making we’d be snuggly as a couple of baby slugs right now –”

“What?”

“Slugs. Baby ones. You never seen sluggies sleep together? All curled up they look, cute little sticky things. Could be us. But no, all we can hear is _blah blah blah it’s alright for you Peri you only get to die once oh lordy I’m so miserable –_ like a car alarm that won’t go off – do you know how testing that is?”

“I’ll go.”

“Oh you won’t just go, Mister, you’ll go and find Mister-me and sort it out like I said the first time. That’s two chances I’ve given you now, more than you give anything – you want me to fetch her out? Hmm? Hmm?”

She jabbed him with the umbrella he had dropped in repeated quick sharp jabs until he stood up, holding on to his ribs.

“Stop that. Ouch! Stop that! I heard you.”

“I know. I’m doing it for fun now. Go! Take this!”

She handed him the umbrella. He limped back into his TARDIS slowly, still looking over his shoulder to watch the door to the other one.

“Yeah.” Missy nodded ominously – “You should be scared. She’s a bitch when something wakes her. Go. Shoo. Heads. I will knock them. Don’t forget.”

She stomped off back into their TARDIS and slammed the door. He closed his a moment later and stood just inside rubbing his head. Somehow he did not feel like he _could_ just sink into comforting misery any more. Damn her. Damn them both. Which was unhelpful, really.

“Right,” he said out loud, to the console room at large, took a deep breath and went over to the controls. He stood for a moment, thinking about what to do next, where to go, what the next horcrux would be. Realising the latter answered all other questions – of course – that last thing Missy had said to him before he left that TARDIS, which his brain had been turning over on the back burner all this time – _Tissue Compression Eliminator_. The next horcrux. He thought back to when he had last seen it, cursing himself for being an idiot when he remembered. He had taken it off the Master in the forest, kept it until he knew he and Peri were safe and then – he groaned. He should have just kept it. It would have been the sensible thing to do, but he was rarely sensible back then was he? Instead of just sticking it in a  pocket he had had to make the gesture to himself and he had flicked it away as they walked, casually throwing it into the undergrowth, never wanting to see it again.

Well now he wanted – or at any rate now he needed to see it again. He turned back to the console and began to program the ship for Redfern Dell in Killingworth village, England, around the start of the nineteenth century.

__x__

**Just for anyone who’s not seen them – the early references to the sixth Doctor here were from _Vengeance on Varos_ (which is a really awesome episode by the way, go watch it) and what I _think_ was the last time the Doctor saw The Master’s TCE – certainly what I’m going with for the purposes of his fic – was in _The Mark of The Rani_ (which yous also need to go watch). **

**Also my beta has pointed out to me that the TARDIS doors open inwards not outwards so probably Missy couldn’t send the Doctor on his ass by opening the door he was leaning against but shhhh, writer’s license or something?** **J**

**Also I suspect Ainley-Master may show up in the next chapter? I’m honestly no longer in control of this fic and Masters be popping up everywhere….like daisies.** **J**


	8. Chapter 8

 

**8.**

He remembers these trees, this sunlight, the look and the feel of this place- though it was what? Four lifetimes ago since he had been there. Except maybe – he sniffed the air, cast his eye down the track where a couple of miners were walking on their way to work – the feel was a little different – or a lot – there wasn’t the tension there had been last time, the positively airborne stress and exhaustion of so many people losing sleep. He turned away from the village and started to head into the woods.

It occurred to him – and he supposed it should have occurred to him sooner – that he had no idea how he was going to manage this; that looking for something as small as a Time Lord weapon in the forest was truly like looking for a needle in a haystack. He wondered suddenly how long it had been, knowing from that feel on the air that he was too late, thankfully, to run into his former self, but hoping it had not been so long that the woods had not overgrown excessively since he idiotically threw the thing away. He looked back towards the road and ran down to it on a whim to accost a young man walking past.

“S’cuse me –”

The man looked at him with a raised eyebrow. It occurred to him he was going to have to phrase this delicately.

“Have there been any – um - other – oddly dressed characters running round these parts recently?”

“Oddly dressed like you, you mean?”

The man looked him over, frowning.

“Maybe? A bit like me? Only – well I should maybe say – worse dressed? Fellow in a multi-coloured coat and another all in black? Young lady – well not that young – auburn hair and –”

He floundered from trying to describe what she had been wearing.

“Don’t want anything to do with that lot,” the man mumbled turning away –

“No – no,” he said quickly. “You really wouldn’t – I was just wondering when it was that they were here?”

“Haven’t seen anything of them since two days now,” the man mumbled, sounding relieved about it, and scurried away.

Two days. Well that wasn’t bad, actually he was more than usually impressed by his own timing. He headed back towards the woods, deciding he would retrace their steps as he could remember them, reminding himself of where they had walked, chaotic though it had all been.

 _Here,_ he stopped finally. _Here was where I “bumped into” the Master and stole the Tissue Compression Eliminator. I was standing just here, he was just there and the Rani just there._ He remembered their proximity like it was yesterday – which in some ways it wasn’t so far off. He remembered for a moment that spark, that brush of energy, and when he closed his eyes, he could almost still smell him here. It made his head spin. He fought to focus, to get a grip, managed enough to start walking in the direction he last remembered taking. He moved slowly at a half crouch, half shuffle of a walk, staring fixedly at the ground and pushing aside the foliage with painstaking care, eyes peeled for the shiny glint of black he found himself expecting at every turn. He could not help but think that there had to be a more effective way of searching, even though he had divided up the woods as far as he could see into sections of a searchable size. It was monotonous, focused searching and he was – well it didn’t sound good, did it? He stopped for a moment, rubbing his hands through his hair and sighing – he was just _bored._ For the first time he regretted abandoning Martha and Jack and a moment later felt guilty for only thinking this now when they might have been of use to him. He wondered what they were doing, if they were managing. He felt guilty again, this time for leaving them in the first place.

He combed the woods until he thought he was going to lose track of time. _Brilliant,_ he thought angrily, bitterly, _childishly –_ a Time Lord without even the time. _I really do have nothing._ He could hear as though it was in his head what Missy would say to that, the scolding he would get for being a misery and was just kicking the roots of a nearby tree in frustration when he heard a voice close behind him; a mild, smiling voice, like a cat purring in the second before it pounces.

“Looking for something – Doctor?”

He whipped around, shivering in the warm day, the back of his neck prickling, the sensation running all down his spine. The Master was standing not three meters from him smiling affably, TCE held elegantly between finger and thumb, clearly just for the drama of it before he slipped it into an inside coat pocket with extreme care.

He swallowed hard, struggling, throat dry. Not _his_ Master of course; in many ways they had never met before, though he recognized him well enough, and the Master smiled wider when he faced him and nodded a fraction, mostly to himself.

“It _is_ you,” he said with curiosity hiding in his voice beneath a tone of cool appraisal. “I could hear you thinking from so far away – not the you I left behind here though; rather a shame, I wanted to have words with him.”

He looked – now that the Doctor had had time to notice – ever so slightly less immaculate than usual. He watched him carefully, quietly, knowing how little this one could bear silence and how quickly he would endeavor to fill it. Sure enough;

“Not that having words with you is not perhaps unproductive in this instant but I _have_ spent an inordinate amount of time in these past two days fleeing from a large and angry dinosaur thanks to you.”

“You’re right, it _is_ unproductive,” the Doctor squints at him – “ _Dinosaur?”_

“A substantially sized Tyrannosaurus Rex, Doctor, thank you yes, which you would know if you had not abandoned two of your oldest acquaintances to its tender mercies.”

“Abandoned -? I didn’t abandon you! The two of you escaped!”

“In a ship which you had sabotaged, yes Doctor? Tell me, did you hope to kill me or did you trust as usual to my powers of survival and tenacity?”

The Doctor could not help but smile. _Oh_ – he thinks, _I have missed you._ The Master’s smile curved like an arched bow and the Doctor cursed inwardly when he realized he must have heard. The past caught onto his heart with all the tugging pain that the future did when he met Missy.

“You’ve become sentimental, my dear Doctor,” the Master observed with what the Doctor suspected should have been scorn, but that contained a great deal more affection than the Master may have wished – “Sentimental and distinctly better looking. Better dressed too, if one might say so. Who’s Missy?”

The Doctor smirked at the note the Master would never admit was jealousy in his voice.

“Oh you just wait, you’re in for a treat. Now can I at least borrow that tissue compression eliminator?”

“You must think I’m utterly mad, Doctor.”

“Well I didn’t like to say but –”

“I don’t know what version of me you’re familiar with, Doctor but you’ll find I am neither redeemable nor able to be convinced to assist you.”

“Well that’s a lie for starters –” he protested, but the Master glared him down so hard he stopped before mentioning Logopolis. He sighed and shrugged.

“I’m going to have to fight you for it, aren’t I?”

The Master grinned from ear to ear and positively stretched as though in front of a pleasant fireplace.

“You’ll lose.”

The Master’s smile did not falter for a second and the Doctor knew his guess had not been wrong – this one _liked_ losing to him, he always had. He took a step towards him. The Master immediately jumped back, grinning, his stance tense and loaded to fight.

“You know, you could be reasonable about this –”

The Master tilted his head to one side and the Doctor sighed, grinned and swerved around him in a sudden move, grabbing him around the throat from behind and holding him in a tight lock while he reached for his inside pocket. The Master elbowed him sharply in the ribs and dropped out of the chokehold, and the Doctor dropped with him, wrestling him down. For a moment all was straining and fighting, twisting together like a pair of savage animals, ending as they always seemed to end; with the Master on his back pinned down by the Doctor, both wrists held above his head and the Doctor yanking the weapon from his inside pocket. He grinned in a victory he wished did not feel quite so satisfying, and pushed the Master down on his back harder than was necessary, hoping his arousal was not as obvious as it felt to him but noticing in the same instant that it was shared. The Master stared up at him, eyes wide and – the Doctor had never wanted to acknowledge it in previous regenerations – almost adorable in their excitement. He pushed up against the Doctor at the same time as the Doctor pressed down against him, rubbing together just a little more than could still be called fighting. In another second the Doctor knew he would kiss him and he knew just as well that the Master would kiss him back.

“You know,” a mild voice came from nearby, startling in its presence and proximity – “I’m _really_ not sure you can still get away with calling that _fighting._ ”

They jumped – _like naughty school boys,_ the Doctor thought – and whipped round guiltily to face the speaker, brushing bits off the forest from themselves in an effort to look away, both from the voyeur’s eyes and from each other.

“This has all been very entertaining,” he said. “But I thought I’d best step in before either of you do anything you’ll later regret, and frankly, I know exactly how much you –” he indicated a shamefaced Master – “are going to.”

“I hardly think –” the Doctor found his composure first – “That you’re in any position to talk about actions one may later regret – are you, Master?”

__x__


	9. Chapter 9

**9.**

The Master sniffed scornfully, drawing in a long and suffering breath to imply that something stank and whatever it was it was not him.

“I regret nothing,” he lied blithely.

“Nothing?” The Doctor eyed him narrowly – he was slouched against the tree in a manner that demonstrated utter nonchalance, complete indifference even, to the conversation he was in. It was so perfect he knew it was forced and false – “Not the toclafane? Not what you did to the Earth? Not the entire year that never happened? You don’t regret – oh I don’t know, _losing_ to me after all?”

For the first time a flicker crossed that overly serene face and the Doctor almost smirked in satisfaction.

“I did not _lose!_ ”

“You died. You said it was winning. And here you are, alive and putting out stars – how’s that going for you?” He took a dangerous step in the Master’s direction. The Master grinned and squared up to it, eyes widening at the energy that crackled between them. The other Master cut them off, taking a step between them and frowning –

“ _Master?”_ his whole face contorted, staring the Master down – “You’re _me?”_

“He’s not the quickest, this one, is he?” The Master said it almost conversationally. “Yes dear-” He turned to the Master. “I’m afraid so. Though, thank goodness for us, on the brains front really.”

“I would _never –_ ” the Master bristled, seething with anger and disbelief – “I cannot believe you imagine I would _ever_ lower myself to dress like that!”

“Oh, because you’re the picture of sartorial perfection, are you?”

The Master straightened his collar –

“I have always liked to think so, yes.”

The Master snorted –

“Only – I do know for a fact that your entire wardrobe consists of almost identical black suits with minor differences here and there. I know this.”

“Can we just please –” the Doctor got back between them, then stopped, turning his head, frowning to the Master behind him –

“It does?”

The Master mumbled something and turned away.

“You know –” his Master – or the one he liked to think of as _his_ at least – went on, not letting go. “I really _hated_ being you, all those fancy words and not one of them true. So embarrassed every time someone fucked that stick out of your arse that you’d never admit it ever happened and _that level_ of pompous, overbearing –”

“Pompous? Overbearing? Have you looked in a mirror lately my dear Master, or are you too horrified at the sphericity your own visage to attempt such a procedure?”

“Okay, first of all, do not “My dear Master” me; save it for him, because I _know_ you do. Also – _sphericity?”_

“It means round,” the Doctor put in helpfully.

“I know what it means!” the Master snapped – “Now do bugger off, catboy, this is between me and him.”

The Doctor groaned softly. The Master frowned, a rather distinguished little frown that the Doctor remembered with a surprising pang having always wanted to iron out with his fingers –

“Cat – boy?”

“Oh, that hasn’t happened yet, has it?” the Master drawled, shrugging a shoulder. “Oh well, my bad. You just wait fancy – pants, it’s gonna be a time.”

“Fancy pants?” the Master spluttered, and the Doctor objected simultaneously –

“No that’s too much, though – that’s _my_ nickname for myself – or was – that’s copying – you’re always copying me!”

“Oh you noticed; how sweet.”

The Master stared at them both incredulously, shook his head minutely, and announced –

“You’re both incredibly childish. I think I’ll leave you to it. I have a poorly dressed ruffian to find and hold accountable for a certain dinosaur.”

He stalked off towards a tree the Doctor supposed he should have realized had not been there before and promptly dematerialized.

“Now,” the Doctor turned back to the Master, suddenly worried that the curiously nostalgic affection with which he had been watching the previous Master leave had been visible on his face – “Stay. We do as you said –”

“ _Dinosaur?_ ” the Master cut him off – “Oh yes, I remember. Happy day. We have had some times, haven’t we, _my dear Doctor?”_

“Don’t mimic your previous selves, Master, it’s….disconcerting.”

“Disconcerting like the stars going out? You seem to be struggling with issues of perspective, Doctor. Though I must say they seem to have stopped – your doing?”

“Actually no,” The Doctor frowned, looking up at the darkening sky before remembering that the stars weren’t going out _yet_ here. He mentally kicked himself with an undertone of more serious self accusation – for not having noticed or having anything to do with this. He wondered who _had_ tackled what he supposed should have been the more urgent business of saving the universe whilst he had been chasing horcruxes in an attempt to save the Master – _Martha?_ he thought. _Jack?_ Because who else knew. He felt guilty all over again. He wondered when he would run out of room for guilt. He saw the Master watching him with a curious expression as though he was picking a lot of this out of his head.

“Are you choosing _me_ over the rest of the universe Doctor? Should I say _again?_ Ugh, I don’t know if I should be touched or disgusted.”

“Why are you doing this?” He knew Missy had already told him, and suspected she had told him true, but he wanted to hear it from the Master himself.

“And you’ve been trying to what? Put me back together, like the good Doctor you are?”

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

“Spare me. So how many do you have? You destroyed one I know- oof, tickled – did you feel it? I know you feel it when you hurt me, just like -” he stopped, scowled at himself with an expression the Doctor knew too well as _I nearly said that out loud, I can’t say that!_ “And you got Lady-Version’s didn’t you? I bet that was the next one – bet she just gave it up like a little bitch too, didn’t she? And now the TCE. So that’s what – three down?”

“Four.”

“Huh. Oh yes the watch. Damn, and I thought I was being so clever. Usually the things hidden from you in plain sight are the ones it takes you longest to find, and you what? Went straight to it. Well that’s just –” he made a face at himself.

“I just want to help you.”

The Master rolled his eyes enormously –

“Oh you _always_ just want to help me. Did you ever think I might not need your help? That I can do just _fine_ without you interfering in all my plans? Did you ever for one minute contemplate not making my life difficult?”

“Your _plans,_ as you put it, do seem to center around the destruction of anything from a planet to in this case – what? The whole universe? Would that be enough? Would you be satisfied if everything was gone? When the last dust fell into nothing, and you went with it, would that finally be enough for you?”

“It will _never_ be enough.”

“For the drumming?”

“Drumming be damned, you can’t fix it, like you can’t fix anything else.”

“And you can’t destroy the universe, you can’t even own it. You’ve got nothing.”

“And what do you have, _Doctor?_ A Doctor who can’t make anyone better, can’t ever help, can’t –”

“I make a lot of things better – and I have friends.”

“Oh yes, of course; I almost forgot. The interminable friends. Who are – where exactly, Doctor? By your side like friends should be or did you just maybe ditch them all like vermin at the first sign of disagreement? So much for your friends.  So much for you – you never fixed _anything._ ”

“And you never controlled anything. So where does that leave us? A Doctor with no-one to care for and a Master of nothing. Now what?”

“Now I take those horcruxes back from you. They’re mine after all.”

“Oh they’re not just yours, they’re you – aren’t they?”

“Your point being?”

“I’m not giving you up.”

The Master starts to laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“You’ll see. Now then – you’ve got three, destroyed one that leaves what – three?”

The Doctor watched him uneasily –

“I think we’re beyond basic maths, aren’t we?” The Master made an impatient gesture with his hand –

“Fine. Now you know I’m one, you’ll have guessed I always keep one about my person –” The Doctor watched his hand move inside a pocket, around something he strongly suspected was a laser screwdriver, knowing that these two would have to be saved to the last to be saved, however he was going to do it –

“I’ll get to you. I’ll just find the last one first.”

“Really Doctor, you are funny.” The Master smiled his most Cheshire cat smile. “Not to mention slow. I mean really? Have you really not worked it out yet?”

“Worked what out – you mean the last horcrux?”

The Master shook his head, half laughing, half huffing in impatience –

“Oh Doctor, you idiot, isn’t it obvious? You _are_ the last horcrux.”

__x__

  **This keeps going a little bit crack? Hope I managed to pull it back a little at the end there even if that reveal did come as a surprise to no-one except the Doctor** **J**  



End file.
